


"/' 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



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cjVfo J J 



ADDRESS 



University Progress. 



DELIVERED BEFORE THE 



National Teachers' Association, 



At Trenton, N. J., August 20, 1S69, 



JOHN W. HOYT, A.M., M.D., 

President of the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters, 
Etc., Etc. 



<C 1 



NEW YORK : 
D. Appleton & Company, 90, 92 and 94 Grand Street. 

1 S70. 



l(\ 115 



Entered according- to Act of Congress, in the year 1S70, by 

John W. Hoyt, 

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



A. Zeese, 

Electrotyper and Stereotyper, 

84 Dearborn St., Chicago. 



UNIVERSITY PROGRESS. 



I. The University of the Past. 
II. The University of the Present. 
III. The University of the Future. 



ADDRESS. 



The term university has been so variously applied, 
since its first educational use, that one is half war- 
ranted in grouping under it a great variety of institu- 
tions, which, if compared with any proper standard, 
would not be entitled to inclusion. And, on the other 
hand, many institutions have existed to which this 
designation, although never applied, would have been 
entirely appropriate. 

Such were the early schools at Athens, in which 
was taught all that was then known of language, 
of literature, of philosophy, and of civil law — in 
which the most gifted poets, the all-persuading orators, 
the profoundest natural and ethical philosophers, and 
the unequaled artists of ancient times were teachers 

where, as pupils, were found troops of Greek 

youths of various genius — to which, as pilgrims to 
some holy shrine, went those immortal Romans, Cicero, 
Virgil, Horace, Lucretius, and others, for instruction 
and inspiration, and whence, also, in good time, they 
bore away, as the precious fruit of their study, that 
learning and grace with which they so enriched 

Portions of the Address, as printed, were necessarily omitted in the delivery. 



6 University Progress. 

and adorned their native tongue. Such were the 
schools of Tarsus, and Pergamus, Berytus, and Alex- 
andria; the later-established Athenaeum of Rome, 
where Quintilian and other distinguished rhetoricians 
and philosophers taught; the still later Auditorium, 
established in the fourth century, at the Byzantine 
capital, by Constantine, and in which there were, 
in the succeeding century, no less than thirty-one pro- 
fessors of grammar, eloquence, philosophy, and law ; 
and, finally, the Saracenic schools of western Asia, 
northern Africa, and Spain, in which almost exclu- 
sively was kept alive the taper-light of learning 
during the Dark Ages, and in which were taught with 
a zeal and completeness never known before, nor, in 
Europe, for centuries afterward, not only grammar, 
eloquence and philosophy, but likewise geometry, 
algebra, astronomy, natural science, jurisprudence and 
medicine. All these, as b.eing the most advanced and 
the most comprehensive schools of those times, were 
universities to all intents and pu rposes, though not 
known by that name. 

The first use of the term university appears to have 
been non-educational, and to have belonged to the 
time of Justinian, when it was synonymous with guild, 
being applied to various associations of tradesmen. 
The idea entertained was purely the etymological one 
of completeness ; and hence the seeming propriety of 
its application to whatever association or society sub- 



The Past. 7 

stantially embraced all the individuals of any locality 
whose interests and aims were common. 

In this sense, the term may have been applied to 
the original medical school of Salenmm, or to any 
body of students or professors united for mutual 
advantage, or for the promotion and diffusion of 
learning. In each of these senses, and in both of 
them, it was used at an early day in the revival of 
learning; and some individual schools with a single 
professional object, — as, for instance, the law school 
at Bologna, — numerously attended by students of 
different nationalities, banded together for mutual 
convenience and advantage, have thus actually em- 
braced several "universities." 

Subsequently, this term was used to designate the 
entire grouping of associations of students, professors 
and officers gathered together at one place for educa- 
tional purposes, as at Paris and Bologna. And 
finally it came to be referred to the subjects taught, 
and thus to imply an association of faculties or schools 
of superior rank and various aims — a signification it 
still bears in those countries where the university, as a 
distinctive institution, has attained its highest devel- 
opment. 



University Progress. 



I. 



The first universities (proper) had their origin, as 
nearly as can be determined, in the latter part of the 
eleventh and the early part of the twelfth centuries ; 
from which time forward for three hundred years the 
number multiplied, first slowly, and then rapidly, 
until, ere the end of the sixteenth century, a very 
large proportion of those now in existence, together 
with many that have not survived, were established. 

This period of three hundred years, beginning with 
the twelfth century, early in which the great schools 
at Paris, Bologna, Cambridge and Oxford assumed a 
form wdiich afterward secured to them the university 
title, is exceedingly interesting, for its record em- 
braces the whole period of what might be properly 
enough styled the romance of educational history. 
The long, dreary period of the Dark Ages had passed; 
the morning twilight of a glorious Eenaissance had 
come, with offers of its priceless boon of letters, 
science and philosophy, and kindling anew the ancient 
love of learning in many lands. At Paris, taught 
those remarkable dialecticians and scholastic philoso- 
phers, William of Champeaux, Abelard, and Peter 
Lombard, central lights of theology and philosophy ; 
while at Bologna stood forth the renowned Irnerius, 



The Past, 9 

profonndest master and most brilliant teacher of the 
Eoman law. Their teachings spread like a new 
evangel ; and soon, from north, and south, and east, 
and west, as it had been a rallying to the standards 
of a new crusade, the intellectual young men — the 
very flower of Europe and even of older Asia and 
Africa — eager for a knowledge of the new doctrines, 
were seen gathering in multitudes to these luminous 
centres ; until, at Bologna, they numbered ten, twelve, 
and twenty thousand, and, at Paris, scarcely less than 
thirty thousand, students. Gathered from diverse 
quarters of the world, and though animated by the 
same general motives, still possessed of mental char- 
acteristics and intellectual and social habits as different 
as their several nationalities, they naturally congre- 
gated in groups, according to their sympathies, preju- 
dices and needs. These groups soon came to be called 
"nations," and to bear the names of such tribes, 
nations, or races as either constituted the whole, or a 
predominant portion, of the several aggregations thus 
formed. 

At Paris, the number of such nations was four — 
the first including all French, Spanish, Italian, Greek, 
African and Asiatic students, and known as the 
French nation ; the second being known as the 
nation of Picardy, including the northeast portion 
of France and the territory now constituting Belgium 
and Netherlands ; the third as the nation of Kor- 



10 University Progress. 

mandy; and the fourth, under the title of English 
nation, embracing all students from Great Britain, 
Brittany, Germany, and the rest of the world. Each 
nation had its own statutes, its own president — known 
as procurator — its own seal, as well as its own sepa- 
rate buildings and its chapel for worship. The 
executive head of the whole institution — thus com- 
posed of various nations, and afterwards also including 
the four faculties of arts, law, medicine and theology, 
each with its own presiding officer, known as dean — 
was the rector, who, together with the deans and pro- 
curators, constituted the university council, to which 
body belonged the prerogatives of legislation and 
general management. The bishop of the diocese, and 
the Abbot of St. Genevieve, were university chancel- 
lors, however, and as such were alone empowered to 
confer degrees; while superior to all, and with 
supreme authority to create, alter or amend the form 
and character of the entire organization, was his holi- 
ness the Pope. 

The university of Bologna mainly differed from 
that of Paris in the number of the nations embraced, 
and in the more democratic character of the univer- 
sity organization ; the ultimate governing power 
being with the students, by whom the academical 
officers were elected, and by whose appointees changes 
could be made in the general statutes every twenty 
years. The teachers and students were divided 



The Past. 11 

first into nations of Italy (known as citra-montanes,) 
and foreigners (who were called nltra-montanes). 
But these were again divided — the citra-montanes 
into seventeen nations, and the ultra-montanes into 
eighteen. Each nation had its presiding officer, who 
— except in the case of the German nation, whose two 
presiding officers bore the title of procurator — was 
known as counselor. These thirty-four counselors 
and two procurators elected the presiding officer of 
the university or rector, to whom all the professors 
were subordinated, and who, with his council of coun- 
selors and procurators, was clothed with large general 
powers, including supreme civil and even criminal 
jurisdiction in all matters involving members of the 
university — a feature copied by nearly all the univer- 
sities subsequently established in other countries. 
Here, also, there were two chancellors, endowed with 
sole authority to confer degrees and honors. 

During this early period (the twelfth century,) the 
English schools at Cambridge and Oxford likewise 
attained considerable importance. Schools of the 
monastic type had long existed at those places — some 
historians say as early as the eighth century — but it 
was not until the example of the Paris institution had 
been set them that they took on the character of uni- 
versities. They were modelled after the university of 
Paris, but the students had even less voice in the gov- 
ernment than in that institution. 



12 University Progress. 

It may well be supposed — and history establishes 
the fact — that in such an age, and among such multi- 
tudes of hot-blooded young men, some of them repre- 
sentatives of the aristocracy, and others pinched by 
want, yet proud, sensitive and ambitious, frequent 
personal and " national " difficulties would arise, such 
as could be only settled by the arbitrament of war. 
Sometimes these quarrels were unorganized and pro- 
miscuous, like the collision of mobs ; often they were 
duel combats, as between single knights of stately 
chivalry ; and again cases are recorded in which hos- 
tile nations, numbering thousands each, withdrew to 
the neighboring fields and fought regular pitched 
battles with bows and arrows, best weapons of those 
early times. 

At a later and yet early day, the foundation of 
"halls" and "colleges" commenced, with the view 
of supplying accommodations for the thousands of 
thirsty students who gathered about the well-spring 
of the university. They were not colleges in the 
modern sense, but great boarding establishments, with 
such regulations as to study and intellectual improve- 
ment, under the direction of one or more competent 
persons, as were calculated to further the main objects 
of individual and university advancement. The 
foundations for these colleges were granted by wealthy 
friends of learning, whose donations were often suffi- 
ciently large to provide not only the necessary build- 



The Past, 13 

ings and equipments, but also a greater or less number 

— sometimes several hundred — free supports for 
meritorious but indigent young men, otherwise unable 
to secure the blessings of education. 

Since the art of printing had not yet been discov- 
ered, all instruction given in those early times was, 
of necessity, by lectures ; and, as the students were 
of many nationalities, there w T as need of a common 
language. Thus the Latin came into universal use, as 
the medium, not only of instruction, but of daily 
intercourse among all the members of the university ; 
which office, I may add, it continued to fulfill in like 
conditions for at least four hundred years. 

- The range of studies was, of course, quite limited ; 
nevertheless, the period of study requisite to the 
higher degrees was many times longer than at present, 
namely, three and a half years for the baccalaureate, 
seven years for the degree of master, and seven to 
nine years more for the degree of doctor ; making a 
total of some fourteen to sixteen years. The degrees 
of master and doctor were at first synonymous, but 
the former came at length to be confined to the faculty 
of arts, and the latter to the professional faculties — a 
difference of application still sanctioned by all the 
present universities in which the faculty of general 
studies is a faculty of arts. The significance of either 
degree depended on the fact that he upon whom it 
was conferred was understood to have qualified him- 



14 University Progress. 

self for the work of the teacher ; nay, more, in most 
universities, if not in all, it was conferred upon such 
only as bound themselves to teach, for a limited time, 
whatever their ulterior designs. They were to be 
actual magistri and doctores, and the degree in either 
case was their license. When a master or doctor pro- 
posed to teach any particular subject, and was assigned 
to that work by the university, he became a professor. 
The compensation of those who taught came in the 
form of fees paid by students. 

Thus matters stood at the end of the twelfth century. 

The thirteenth century was signalized not more by 
the continued and growing success of the four great 
universities already established, their development by 
the addition of new faculties, and the commencement 
in England of college foundations, destined eventually 
to supersede the halls — and unhappily required to be 
administered in the interest of the dominant church — 
than by the founding of six new universities, to- wit : 
those founded at Naples (in 1224), at Padua (1228), at 
Salamanca (1240), at Ooimbra, Macerata, and Perugia 
(1290). 

The first three of these were destined to attain a dis- 
tinction only second to that of the universities of Paris 
and Bologna, and to the first is awarded the honor of 
having led all the universities in the systematic division 
of the instruction into faculties, and a distribution of 



The Past. 15 

studies into annual courses. This period was also 
distinguished by a decline of interest in the general 
studies now known as the arts, and a disproportionate 
advancement of the professional faculties — in Italy, 
of jurisprudence and medicine ; and in France, of 
theology and philosophy. So marked was this mon- 
opoly of interest by the faculty of law in Italy, that 
Roger Bacon, most learned man of those times, was 
constrained to raise his voice in earnest and eloquent 
protest against the educational character and tenden- 
cies of the age — the tendency especially of the juris- 
prudence of the Italians to do away with the study of 
" wisdom " (philosophy, theology and science), and so 
undermine the foundations of both church and state. 
]STor did he content himself with this solemn protest ; 
he also made resolute endeavors to establish the high 
claims of inductive philosophy as the only ground- 
work of a true science. Nevertheless, jurisprudence 
was deaf to all Bacon's protests, and as late as 1262 
claimed a large proportion of the 20,000 students then 
at Bologna. 

. Bacon might with equal propriety have protested 
against the proclivities and practices of the university 
of Paris, where not even law was yet established, and 
where the so-called philosophy of the schoolmen so 
absorbed the attention and interest, that this philoso- 
phy came to be known in style as the " style of Paris." 
It was during this period that the university of 



16 University Progress. 

Oxford attained so remarkable a fame that thousands 
of students (some historians say thirty thousand) were 
gathered there from every part of Europe ; so that 
bastions in the city walls had to be rented for their 
use. It was also in the latter part of this century that 
Bologna originated the practice of paying stated 
salaries to professors, and that boards of examiners 
were appointed — by papal bull for theology, and by 
imperial decree for law and medicine. 

Hitherto the university movement had been confined 
to the Latin states and England. But at length the 
fire kindled in the less easily ignited — and really less 
well prepared — German mind, and a work com- 
menced in Austria about the middle of the fourteenth 
century, which gradually extended not only into all 
the German states, but even into Scandinavia; while 
Italy became more zealous, as time advanced, and 
added yet six other universities to the splendid galaxy 
already hers ; and France founded those of Mont- 
pellier, Toulouse and Orleans. Rome led off in 1303, 
followed in succession by Orleans in 1309, Pisa in 
1338, Polish Cracow in 1343, Valladolid in 1316, 
Prague and Vienna in 1348 and 1365, Pa via — after 
awhile so illustrious — and Sienna in 1361, Heidel- 
berg in 1387, Ferrara and Palermo in 1391 and 1391, 
and finally by Erfurt in 1392. 

No single century has done a nobler work than this, 
and none has been more distinguished for the bril- 
liancy of its educational history. 



The Pad. 17 

Spain, no longer content to send her aspiring youth 
to Paris and Bologna, had directed her energies for 
more than half a century to her own Salamanca, and 
was now rewarded by seeing that young university an 
acknowledged rival of these renowned schools, with 
its 10,000 to 12,000 students, gathered from her own 
provinces, and from many other countries north and 
south of the Mediterranean sea. Eager thousands 
still flocked to the early Italian, French and English 
centres, and thousands more to the newer universities. 

Nor were these the chief educational glories of the 
fourteenth century. That for which it will be most 
gratefully remembered is the tact that it constituted 
the first period of the renaissance of letters, begun 
and so tar advanced by those divine sons of Italy, 
Dante, Petrarch and Bocaccio, whose own matchless 
works, and whose reproduction in their purity of the 
works of the greatest Greek and Latin authors, did 
more than all else to turn the intellectual forces of 
those times from the comparatively fruitless channel 
of scholasticism into the more profitable one of sound 
classical culture. 

Nevertheless, it stands as a remarkable fact that 
the universities of Italy were among the very last to 
become imbued with the spirit of the renaissance of 
letters, whose work was begun, and for a long time 
carried on, outside of the university halls. The 
humanities were taught in private schools, but all the 

2 



13 University Progress. 

teaching officially authorized in Italy was ruled by 
Averroism, not only during the fourteenth, but also 
during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries — ruled 
in the face of progress everywhere else, in spite of the 
humanities and the Cartesian philosophy, which by 
this time had found some footing in nearly all the uni- 
versities of the world, and even in spite of the Catholic 
church, with whose doctrines it was, of course, not in 
harmony. 

The fifteenth century was marked by a still further 
and wider diffusion of the love of learning, especially 
of the classics, now finding welcome in nearly all the 
countries of Europe, and by the consequent establish- 
ment of a great number of new universities ; including, 
among those which have survived to this day, those 
of Wurzburg, Bavaria, founded in 1403 ; Leipsic, in 
1409 ; Yalencia, Spain, in 1410 ; St. Andrews, Scot- 
land, in 1411 ; Turin, in 1412 ; Rostock, Mecklenburg- 
Schwerin, in 1419 ; Parma, Italy, in 1422 ; Lou vain, 
Belgium, in 1426 ; Florence, in 1438 ; Catania, Italy, 
in 1445 ; Glasgow, Scotland, in 1450 ; Greifswalde, 
Prussia, in 1456; Freiburg, Baden, 1457; Basel, 
Switzerland, in 1459 ; Pesth, Hungary, in 1465 ; 
Saragossa, Spain, in 1474 ; Upsal, Sweden, in 1476 ; 
Tubingen, Wurtemburg, in 1477 ; Copenhagen, in 
1479 ; and Aberdeen, Scotland, in 1494. By the close 
of this century, universities had so increased in num- 



The Past 19 

ber that Italy possessed 19, France 15, Germany, 
Netherlands, Austria and Switzerland 15, Spain and 
Portugal 9, England 2, Scotland 3, Hungary, Poland, 
Denmark and Sweden 1 each — in all, 67. As to 
condition, those of Italy, France, Spain and England 
were still foremost, although Cambridge and Oxford 
showed symptoms of weakness, and so declined in the 
number of students that many of the halls or hostels 
were pretty much deserted. 

The German universities, too closely patterned after 
French and Italian models, and but poorly endowed, 
were destined to struggle long in feebleness, and to 
exert but little influence on the mind and life of the 
German people. Theology was the all-controlling 
element in them, as law was in Italy, and but few of 
the great scholars of Germany were connected with 
them. Habits of idleness and dissoluteness prevailed 
to a fearful extent, and even duels, riots, and disgrace- 
ful collisions among the students, and between them 
and the people of the localities, were very common, 
and continued to be so until a much later day. 

Two important features of the German universities 
were distinctive : the extraordinary privileges and 
civil powers granted them by many of the govern- 
ments under whose patronage they were established, 
and the policy early adopted by nearly if not all of 
them as to the mode of providing the corps of instruc- 
tors. 



20 University Progress 

The civil privileges and powers referred to were 
those of constituting within themselves, by appoint- 
ment and election, a regular court for the trial of all 
members of the university, whether students, profes- 
sors, or the families of these, for violations either of 
the university statutes or the laws of the land. The 
university was in fact a sort of independent constitu- 
tional government, with its own rights and preroga- 
tives of the most grave and serious character, which 
even the state could not invade or disregard. 

The other distinctive feature was the gradation of 
teachers in the several faculties, and the adoption of a 
system of promotions from the lowest to the highest 
rank, with a view to insure, first, a sufficiently large 
instructional force to do the work of teaching ; secondly, 
of securing the best talent that could be developed ; and, 
thirdly, of securing such best available instruction at 
the greatest economy to the university funds, which 
in most cases were very small. Such professors as 
were appointed to give the regular and necessary 
courses of instruction were denominated ordinary pro- 
fessors (prqfessores ordinarii). The remainder of the 
work of instruction, and in many of the more prosper- 
ous universities a large proportion of the whole, was 
done by extraordinary professors (professores extra- 
ordmarii), and private teachers (privat-docenten), all 
of whom were regarded as ordinary or full professors 
in prospect — professors in the formative stage. These 



The Pad. 21 

peculiarities in the organization of the German uni- 
versity still characterize it, and will be spoken of more 
in detail further on. 

Afterwards, most other European countries also 
adapted this system more or less fully; though, in its 
completeness, it has always been a German feature 
of university education. 

In the sixteenth century, the work of founding new 
universities still continued with unabated zeal. The 
most important of the new institutions were those 
established at Wittenberg, in 1502; at Seville, Spain, 
in 1504 ; at Marburg, Hesse-Cassel, in 1527 ; at Gra- 
nada and Santiago, Spain, in 1531 and 1532; at 
Konigsburg, Prussia, in 1511; at Messina, Italy, in 
1518; at Jena, Saxe-Weimar, in 1558; at Leyden, 
Holland, in 1575; at Oviedo, Spain, in 1580; at 
Olmutz, Austria, in 1581 ; at Edinburgh, Scotland, in 
1582; at Gratz, Austria, in 1586; and at Dublin, 
Ireland, in 1591. But the distinguishing educational 
feature of this age was the extraordinary fruit pro- 
duced by the universities previously founded. Though 
their teaching had but slowly improved, the more 
orderly and systematic manner of it, as w T ell as the 
wider range it took, and the nearness of relation into 
which it brought the minds of their students, through 
the medium of the classics, now largely substituted 
for, or perhaps I should rather say added to, the subtle- 



22 University Progress. 

ties of dialectics, for which the schools had hitherto 
been chiefly remarkable, — these had a powerful influ- 
ence upon the intellect of those times, and contributed 
vastly more than we are wont to suppose to that 
development and increased power which enabled so 
many leading men of that brilliant era to break the 
shackles of mere authority and advance into the 
realms of independent thought. If we pronounce the 
names of but a few of the great men whom the uni- 
versities of that period gave, not to Europe alone and 
the needy ( age in which they lived, but to the world 
and to all future time, behold what a roll of honor ! 
Luther, educated at the university of Erfurt ; Melanc- 
thon, at Heidelberg ; Calvin, at Paris and Orleans ; 
Pope Gregory XIII., at Bologna ; Copernicus, at Cra- 
cow ; Erasmus, at Paris and Turin ; Tom Moore and 
Sir Walter Raleigh, at Oxford ; Cranmer, Latimer, 
Ridley, Ben Johnson, Sir Edward Coke, Spenser and 
Francis Bacon, at Cambridge ; John Knox, at Glas- 
gow ; Tycho Brahe, at Copenhagen, and Kepler, at 
Tubingen — a grand constellation of the most illus- 
trious divines, reformers, poets, sages, jurists, explo- 
rers, philosophers and astronomers, established in the 
world's intellectual firmament forever! 

If, now, we again draw the curtain, and look in 
upon the seventeenth century, we shall find, in the 
midst of the tumults, wars and political upheavals, an 



The Past. 23 

equal activity in the intellectual and educational 
world; the schoolmen, theologians, and philosophers 
in the most active, unintermitting and irrepressible 
dispute ; the Italian universities, — already too numer- 
ous but yet being multiplied by the founding of two 
others, viz., at Cagliari in 1606, and at Urbino in 1671, 
— though not so neglectful of the humanities, yet still 
partial to jurisprudence, and beginning to feel the 
influence of the papal reaction upon the aggressive 
power of the Reformation ; the German universities 
still so inferior that a majority of the ambitious youth 
prefer to study in foreign countries, yet increasing in 
number by the establishment of several new ones, 
including those founded at Giessen in 1607, at Inn- 
spruck in 1672, and at Halle in 1694, and yet gaining 
withal in vigor and force, under the stimulus of the 
fiery theological disputes of which they were the 
principal centres ; the universities of Spain, like those 
of Italy, repressing the spirit of inquiry, and like them 
showing evidences of decline no less marked than the 
evidences of progress in Germany ; the French uni- 
versities losing their partiality for theology and 
devoting increased attention to philosophy and to 
physical and metaphysical science ; the English uni- 
versities less disturbed at first, but afterwards pro- 
foundly agitated by the political and religious troubles 
that marked the closing decades of that eventful 
period, losing more and more of their monastic char- 



24: University Progtess. 

acter, abolishing their hostels, and building colleges 
in their stead ; the Dutch founding the university of 
Groningen in 1614, and again one at Utrecht in 1636, 
both flourishing still ; Sweden establishing her second, 
at Dorpat, in 1632, and her third at Lund in 1668, pat- 
terning again, as in the case of Upsal, after the original 
"national" models; Russia beginning her university 
work by the suppression of the university of Dorpat, 
sole institution of the kind within the limits of her 
empire ! and America, in the wilds of the new western 
hemisphere, and but sixteen years after the landing 
of the Pilgrims, laying the foundation of her first uni- 
versity, at Cambridge. At the older universities we 
shall find a scarcely less number than in the preceding 
century of young men of surpassing genius preparing, 
by a thorough discipline of their powers, for successful 
grapple with the great problems of the material and 
spiritual universe. Among them are Descartes, Mil- 
ton and Newton, at Cambridge ; Sir Matthew Hale 
and Locke, at Oxford ; Galileo, at Pisa and Padua ; and 
Leibnitz, at Leipsic. At Leipsic university, in 1687, 
we also find Thomasius boldly making his innovation 
upon the hitherto invariable rule of lectures in the 
Latin language by teaching jurisprudence to his 
fellow countrymen in their own rugged vernacular. 

The eighteenth century opened upon a new face of 
things. The period of romance had passed. Schol- 



The Past. 25 

asticism had so long ceased to flourish, and had been 
so universally succeeded by the classics, that its fasci- 
nations and its somewhat useful, but more generally 
fantastic, achievements were remembered as a dream, 
or, at most, read as a part of the great history of phi- 
losophy. The solid foundations were preparing for 
the present noble superstructure of the metaphysical, 
physical, and natural sciences. Freedom of inquiry 
and freedom of discussion, valiantly maintained in the 
face of persecution and death, during the struggle of 
the Reformation, w r ere now firmly established. It is 
true that the glory of Bologna, and Paris, and Sala- 
manca, and Louvain, was a glory of the past ; that 
Oxford and Cambridge, so long the pride of England, 
and the nursing mothers of her great men, had suc- 
cumbed to a corrupt state church, had been fettered and 
strangled in the name of religion ; that learning lan- 
guished ; that life in most of the colleges had become 
indolent and vicious ; and that the English universities, 
dead to all ideas of duty or of glory, and controlled 
almost wholly by the basest spirit of religious and 
political prejudice, had ceased to cherish the literary, 
philosophic, and scientific spirit, for which they were 
once justly famous, and had become the foster mothers 
of bigotry and irreligion instead. It is also undeniable 
that, in all the Latin states of Europe, the effects of the 
great reaction from the liberalism of the Reformation on 
the development of the university faculties of letters, 



26 University Progress. 

philosophy, and science were still plainly visible. But, 
on the other hand, the universities of Germany, hith- 
erto resting under the contempt of the best scholars 
of the times, had meantime become filled with the 
love of profound culture and the spirit of free investi- 
gation, and so had fairly entered upon that career of 
development which was destined, within another hun- 
dred years, to secure to them an acknowledged place 
in the very front rank of the foremost schools of the 
world. 

During the first thirty or forty years, Halle had the 
lead. It was especially strong in theology, of which 
there were sometimes nearly a thousand students. 
But in 1737 was founded the university of Gbttingen, 
with the gift of a rich endowment that enabled it to 
employ the most eminent men of learning in Ger- 
many, as professors, as well as to form at an early day 
one of the largest and most valuable university libra- 
ries in Europe, and, more than all, with the priceless 
boon of freedom — advantages enjoyed by none of its 
predecessors or cotemporaries, and which enabled it at 
a very early period in its development to gain the 
ascendancy it maintained for nearly three-quarters of 
a century over all other German schools. Meantime, 
Breslau (1702), Erlangen (1743), Lamberg (1781), and 
some others less important, of Germany, together with 
Camerino (1727), and Sassari (1766), of Italy, had 
been established, and Russia had laid (1755) the 



The Past. 27 

foundation for her iirst university, at Moscow. The 
arts faculty of Cambridge had become pre-eminently 
mathematical, and, one by one, all the professional 
faculties in both Cambridge and Oxford had fallen 
into decay or migrated to London. In the new 
world, upon the recommendation of George Clinton, 
Governor of l!^ew York, a new practical application 
of the term university had been made by the creation 
(in ITS 7) of the University of ]S r ew York, made to 
consist simply of a board of regents, charged with the 
general supervision and management of most of the 
academies and colleges of the state. 

The fruits of intellectual culture had, by this time, 
become so abundant in Europe that it were vain to 
attempt, within small compass, to name the distin- 
guished men whom the universities prepared during 
the eighteenth century for the service of mankind and 
for immortality in history. A mere glance at the 
university registers of this period shows Emanuel 
Swedenborg to have been a student at Upsala ; Klop- 
tock at Jena ; Horseley, Blackstone, and Fox at 
Oxford; Goldsmith at Dublin, Edinburgh and Ley- 
den ; Llume at Edinburgh ; the Jussieus at Paris and 
Montpellier ; Linnceus at Lund and Upsal ; Galvani at 
Bologna ; Lavoisier at Paris ; Buffon at Dijon ; Beer- 
have at Leyden ; Wieland, Hegel and Schelling at 
Tubingen ; Lessing at Leipsic ; Fichte at Jena, Leipsic 
and Wittenberg ; Schleiermacher at Halle ; Goethe at 



28 University Progress.' 

Leipsic and Strasburg ; Adam Smith at Glasgow and 
Oxford ; Pitt at Cambridge ; and Immanuel Kant and 
Herder at Konigsberg ; together with a multitude of 
others, scarcely less distinguished than these, in all the 
departments of learning and human activity. 

The nineteenth century came as the dawn of a new 
era, destined to be characterized by changes even 
more remarkable than the substitution of classical cul- 
ture for the fantasies of the early scholastic philosophy 
— changes still in progress, and daily assuming greater 
and greater importance. It opened with Konigsberg 
in the lead. The remarkable teachings and published 
works of a single professor — Immanuel Kant — made it 
the most conspicuous university in Europe. Disciples 
of the new philosopher were soon found in all the uni- 
versities ; so that, while he lived, Konigsberg was a 
luminary that fastened the eyes of all Europe. Oxford 
and Cambridge showed the fruits of the intellectual 
agitation of the times — due so largely to the French 
Revolution — ■ in the revival of learning and education. 
Oxford began to be less exclusively classical, and 
Cambridge less predominantly mathematical than 
hitherto, since the impress put upon it by Newton. 
Examinations, so long a mere farce, were made more 
effective ; " class-list," with its powerful stimulation, 
was instituted ; and both of these venerable institutions 
again assumed a position of influence among the intel- 



The Past. 20 

lectual forces of the nation. So, likewise, there was 
apparent throughout central and northern Europe the 
growth of a more scientific spirit, and even a resolute 
purpose in some quarters to free the university from 
the fetters of bigotry and mere authority, by which it 
had so long been restrained from entering upon its 
legitimate career. 

Then followed those desolating wars that ravaged 
the continent, seriously deranging nearly all the uni- 
versities, and, by reason of political and territorial 
changes, as well as by waste of property and the long- 
continued disturbance of social order, resulting in the 
enfeebled condition, frequent removal, and final sup- 
pression of several of the German universities ; includ- 
ing those of Helmstadt, Erfurt, Rinteln, Frankfort-on- 
the-Oder, Duisburg, Wittenburg, Mainz, Bamburg, 
Cologne, Paderborn, Munster, Dillingen, and Salzburg. 
While in France the whole system of university educa- 
tion, pretty much broken up during the Revolution, 
was reconstructed in 1808 by Napoleon, who, enlarging 
upon the plan of Governor Clinton, consolidated all 
the schools of the empire, under the title of the " Uni- 
versity of France." The whole country was divided 
into seventeen districts, in each of which there was an 
academy, with its rector and council in authority over 
all secondary and primary schools of the district, and 
its faculties two or more, according to the circum- 
stances. Subsequently — during the interregnum 



30 University Progress. 

between the first and present empire — the number 
of districts and academies was increased to twenty-six. 
But the general cast of the system remained unchanged 
until Napoleon III practically merged the "uni- 
versity " into the present imperial council, with the 
minister of public instruction at its head. 

In the other continental countries, no very notable 
changes in the university system followed the plow- 
share of universal war. But in England there came, 
soon after, a revival of religious bigotry and intoler- 
ance, still further narrowing the scope of the ancient 
universities, and tightening those always absurd 
and now monstrous religious tests, through whose 
agency the freest and best minds of the nation were 
doomed to exclusion — through whose agency, indeed, 
those very institutions that might have been the most 
potential and illustrious in Europe were maintained 
at a level lower than those of any other country, nay, 
in the condition of being, not universities at all, but 
mere high denominational schools, kept up in the 
interest of, and controlled by, the English church. 

But the planting of new universities still went on. 
.Russia founded universities at Kasan and Kharkov 
(1803), at St. Petersburg (1819) and Kiev (1833), and, 
in 1827, removed the Finnish university from Abo 
and substantially founded it at Helsingfors, the capital, 
Prussia made up for the German losses by founding 
the great university of Berlin (1809) and the one at 



The Pad. 31 

Bonn (1818). Norway established her first and only 
university, at Christiania, patterning after the German 
type. Italy added to her cluster the university of 
Genoa (1812). Belgium planted universities at Ghent 
(1816), at Liege (1817), and at Brussels (1837). The 
Ionian Islands founded one at Corfu (1821). Switzer- 
land added two others, one at Berne and the other at 
Zurich (1833-4). England created the anomalous 
examining board entitled the University of London 
(1836), followed nine years later by the somewhat 
similar organization known as Queen's College, Ireland. 
And, last of all, Greece, mother of all the universities 
and of the literature, science, philosophy and art they 
have fostered and developed during the past two 
thousand years, happily completed the circle of the 
centuries by founding, at Athens, her first nominal 
university in 1837. 

As to our own country, all Americans are familiar 
with how rapidly, within the last period, institutions 
of learning aspiring to the rank of universities have 
sprung up in all parts of the United States. 

But the most remarkable product of this century's 
early planting — most perfect also of its kind, regard- 
less of time — was the university of Berlin. Its foun- 
dations were laid in the dark hour of national defeat 
— while the thunder of Napoleon's cannon still echoed 
among the hills about Jena — while French bayonets 
yet glistened in the streets of Berlin, aud the heroic 



32 University Progress. 

Frederick "William was still an exile in the remotest 
corner of his dismembered realm. Its origin was a 
profound conviction of the king, shared by the ablest 
statesmen of the time, that the surest way for Prussia 
to her lost rank among the great nations, was through 
the door of intellectual supremacy; and that the most 
potent agency for the attainment of that supremacy 
would be a grand central university that should 
embrace the best cultivated men of the age, and that 
should be able by means of free inquiry to advance 
the knowledge of the world in every department, by 
the maintenance of the highest possible standards in 
its own faculties to raise all classes of schools below 
it to a higher level, and thus, by means of true 
enlightenment, stimulation and guidance, to insure the- 
universal and the highest possible education of her 
people. 

Planned under the. leadership of the distinguished 
and far-seeing Willi elm von Humboldt, then minister 
of public instruction, and in counsel with the wisest 
scholars of Germany, it had the benefit of the long 
experience of all other institutions of its kind, com- 
parative freedom from the prejudices and errors in 
which they were founded, the inspiration of the new 
era of science, and' the powerful stimulus of a desperate 
and yet lofty national ambition. It was founded, 
therefore, in the special interest of no church, or school, 
whether of politics, philosophy or science, but solely 



The Past. 33 

and sublimely in the interest of free and universal cul- 
ture. Its teachers were to know no fetters, its students 
to be rather led and lifted up by the inspiration of the 
schools than forced into fixed channels by the con- 
straints of arbitrary law. Wolf, Fichte, Reil, Savigny, 
and Schleiermacher were among the illustrious men 
who first taught in its halls. The experiment was a 
splendid success. Within five years from the date of 
inauguration its corps of professors and teachers num- 
bered fifty-six, and within sixteen years its students 
sixteen hundred. It became, of course, an object of 
envy to many of the ancient universities, no less than 
of pride to the kingdom of Prussia, under whose foster- 
ing care it soon rose to be the pride of all Germany 
and the grand model after which, as fast as circum- 
stances would allow, the other German universities 
have been more or less fashioned. 






Si University Progress. 



II. 

Within the past few years the European universities 
have ceased to multiply, and the efforts of learned 
men and governments have been wisely directed to 
the development of such as already exist, with a view 
to making them better answer the demands of the 
present age. 

And yet this statement is hardly true, except as 
to multiplication, of Spain and Portugal, where the 
universities may be said to have fallen into a decay, 
from which nothing but the upheaval of some revolu- 
tion, like that now disturbing the old order of things 
in Spain, seems likely to rescue them. ~Nor is it 
wholly true of the Dutch universities ; for, although 
the university of Leyden has, of late, opened wide its 
doors to the physical and natural sciences, like the 
other two, at Utrecht and Groningen, in most other 
respects it firmly holds on to the old regime of two 
hundred years ago. !Nor yet is it true, in general, of 
either the Scandinavian or Russian universities, — 
though, in a qualified sense, applicable to those of 
Copenhagen and Christiania, where the field of study 
is being steadily enlarged, where private lecturers 
(corresponding to the privat-docenten of Germany) 
are beginning to find place, and where the students 



The Present. 85 

are more nearly on the German footing, — for, in 
Russia, they have scarcely made any perceptible pro- 
gress since their foundation; and in Sweden, the 
ancient universities of Lund and Upsal even maintain 
their mediaeval statutory regulations as to the constitu- 
tion of the four faculties, the appointment and support 
of chancellors, pro-chancellors, deans, professors, and 
assistants, and the division of all their students into 
nations, after the manner of the French, English and 
Italian universities of five and six hundred years ago. 
In all the countries above-named, as being exceptions 
to the rule of modern improvement, the universities 
are not only state institutions, and the recipients of 
regular funds from their respective governments, but 
several of them are numerously attended — those of 
Copenhagen, Christiania, Upsala and St. Petersburg 
numbering from 800 to 1,500 students. They are 
weak, however, in the number of their professors ; the 
number employed in the professional faculties scarcely 
exceeding four to seven, with, perhaps, two or three 
adjuncts and docents, and in the philosophical faculty 
ten to twenty professors, with a corresponding number 
of adjuncts and docents. 

Of all the northern — north of Copenhagen — uni- 
versities, the Imperial Alexander's University of Fin- 
land, at Helsingfors, seems more especially to have 
caught the spirit of modern improvement, and to be 



36 University Progress. 

fairly alive. It was there, in my recent tour of 
inspection, and there only, that I breathed no longer 
the stagnant atmosphere of the dead past. The pro- 
fessional faculties are not yet strong, — a fact that may 
be accounted for, perhaps, by the paucity of the popu- 
lation they have need to supply with professional men, 
and that geographical isolation which denies to them 
the advantage of numerous foreign students, — but the 
philosophical faculty, numbering eighteen professors, 
six readers (lektorer), and fourteen docents, is not only 
characterized by the activity and scientific spirit of the 
German philosophical faculty, but is also marked by 
the very notable disposition of the foremost universi- 
ties of the world to develop out of itself special 
schools devoted to the more thorough cultivation of 
important groups of studies, the necessary mastery of 
which cannot be accpiired in the simple faculty of 
philosophy as a school of high general and philo- 
sophic culture 

The English universities are, to-day, almost more 
anomalous than those of Sweden ; for although these 
last are linked by the national feature to the thirteenth 
century, in their general faculty constitution they are 
the kindred of the foremost universities of the present 
time ; whereas Oxford and Cambridge have lost their 
university character altogether and become nothing 
other than great colleges, formed by the practical and 



The Present. 37 

le^al agrfirregation of numerous grammar schools 
known as " colleges " and " halls." The faculties, as 
before remarked, have ceased to exist; and although 
degrees, theological, medical and legal, are still con- 
ferred by the so-called university authorities, the 
instruction received by candidates, excepting the few 
lectures given by the university professors, is given in 
connection with the independent schools, hospitals and 
inns of court found in the great cities. 

Of the colleges thus aggregated, Cambridge has 
seventeen ; Oxford nineteen, besides five halls, which 
practically amount to the same thing. Each of them 
is a separate corporation, with its own independent 
estates, and is governed by its own " head " and " fel- 
lows," who exercise supreme authority over the stu- 
dents within its walls. The instruction is given by 
" tutors " exclusively. Some of the colleges are so 
richly endowed that their several incomes support not 
only the head at a salary of $5,000 to $15,000, the 
tutors and over a score of other " fellows " at salaries 
ranging from $500 to $1,500, but also to aid numerous 
undergraduate stipendiaries, known as "scholars," 
with annual amounts of from $300 to $500. Fellows, 
tutors and scholars are elected after competitive exam- 
inations ; and as, in addition to the handsome incomes 
thus secured, they have a free home in the college 
buildings, it may be supposed that those examinations 
are thorough and severe. The great body of the stu- 



38 University Progress. 

dents support themselves, however; boarding (as 
" commoners " or " pensioners ") at the college table, 
and paying such moderate fees for instruction as are 
required to make a sufficient support for the tutors. 
Resident fellows, not employed as tutors, are enabled 
by the incomes secured to them to follow such higher 
courses of study as are offered them in the uni- 
versity, or to pursue such special investigations as 
they like. 

Superior to these colleges and halls there is a fed- 
eral authority known as the "university," whose 
senate legislates in a general way upon subjects of 
both education and discipline for the entire federation 
of colleges, and, through its own officers, manages 
them as one institution, holding the examinations, 
conferring all degrees, etc. The university instruction 
consists wholly of lectures, given by some thirty pro- 
fessors, many of whom are appointed quite as much 
to sustain the dignity of the institution as with a view 
to any essential service in the way of instruction. As 
the university itself is not endowed, like the colleges, 
but dependent upon the government, the post of pro- 
fessor is less important pecuniarily than that of tutor. 
It is perhaps in this circumstance of the poverty of the 
universities as such, however, that the promise lies of 
a better future ; since it is the occasion of their being 
brought into the arena of discussion, and subjected to 
the criticism of liberal and progressive minds. The 



The Present. 39 

fruit of such discussion is already showing itself in 
the partial abolishment of the ancient religious tests ; 
in the introduction of studies long excluded, upon 
terms of equality with the classical studies, which so 
long have had a monopoly of the instruction given in 
these and others of the great schools of England; 
in the curtailment of the time once so lavishly, and, as 
it seems to me, unnecessarily, spent upon Latin and 
Greek, even upon their own theory of the relative 
importance of those studies ; in a limited modification 
of the ancient statute requiring all students to belong 
to one of the colleges ; and in the prevalence of a 
strong desire, in some high quarters, for a thorough 
reorganization of the English universities upon a basis 
more in harmony with the intellectual wants of Great 
Britain, and with the spirit of the age. 

The Scottish and Irish universities, having had less 
need of reformation in many of the particulars above 
referred to, have undergone less change within the 
few past years than those of England. 

Institutions of the university class are less numerous 
in Great Britain than in any other European country 
of equal population, except Russia, and nothing but a 
blind and stubborn conservatism has prevented their 
being put upon at least an equality with the foremost 
in the world. 

In point of slow progress and present backward con- 



40 University Progress. 

dition, Italy ranks next in the ascending scale. The 
majority of her universities conform more nearly to 
the highest present standard, in the matter of constitu- 
tion, the completeness of their faculties, and the length 
of the term of study prescribed, than a majority of 
those of France ; but, on the other hand, in the active 
energy manifested, and the number of students attend- 
ing them, she is behind. There are twenty in all — 
fifteen of them royal, and five free, or independent of 
state control — and yet the total number of students 
is but 10,000, or about one student to every 2,200 of 
the population. Even among these, the proportion is 
lamentably large of those who seem to be there with 
no very definite purpose, and who are ready, there- 
fore, at all times to shirk the labor of hard study, and 
even occasionally, with or without pretext — and 
usually for the reason that they fancy still easier times 
await them at some other institution, or at no institu- 
tion at all — to effect a practical adjournment of their 
several courses of study by retiring in large bodies ; 
leaving their forsaken professors to lecture to vacant 
seats, or close their labors for that particular semester. 
The professors, too, as a general rule, in the Italian 
universities, have fallen into easy habits, giving fewer 
lectures per semester by one-third than is common in 
those of Germany and some other states, and yet 
doing no more if so much in the way of private labors 
as investigators and authors. 



The Present. 41 

A full Italian university consists of five faculties — 
a faculty of letters and philosophy {facoltd filosoftco- 
jilologica), a faculty of the sciences {facoltd delle 
scienze fiswhe matematlche e naturall), a faculty of 
jurisprudence, a faculty of medicine, and a faculty of 
theology. The faculty of theology is often wanting, 
for the reason that instruction in the theological 
branches is so generally given in the seminaries 
established by the church. 

In no country — not even in France and Belgium, 
where the time-honored faculty of philosophy is 
divided in like manner — is the field of general cul- 
ture so divided up and cultivated in detail; and in 
none is the term of study more protracted. Not con- 
tent with a single division of the arts or philosophical 
faculty into the two faculties first above-named, they 
so distribute the studies embraced as to make six four- 
years courses, each with its own special diploma, 
to-wit : one in letters, one in philosophy, one in pure 
mathematics (including, however, inorganic chemisr 
try, physics and design), one in physico-mathematical 
sciences (which also embraces geology and mineral- 
ogy), one in the physico-chemical sciences, and one in 
natural history. 

The terms of admission are uniform throughout the 
kingdom, requiring, among other things, that the 
applicant shall present the certificate of licenza liceale 
(corresponding to our degree of A.B.) The term of 



4:2 University Progress. 

study requisite to a final examination for a degree in 
the faculty of theology, in all universities in which 
such a faculty exists at all, is five years, in that of 
jurisprudence five, in that of medicine six years. 
Whether under a more rigorous management these 
protracted courses of study are absolutely necessary 
or not, their prescription by the Italian government 
affords gratifying evidence of a disposition to keep the 
door to the professions closed against all who refuse 
to qualify themselves therefor in a thorough manner. 
The government further manifests its desire to make 
the universities useful by contributing so liberally 
to their support * that only very small fees need be 
demanded of students. Indeed, the fees are so near 
nothing that, with the moderate expenses of living, 
the average total cost of the Italian university stu- 
dent's maintenance is but $160 per annum. Never- 
theless, owing to the too great number of these insti- 
tutions — which makes it impossible for the govern- 
ment to officer them with the strongest and ablest 
corps of professors — as well as to the general intel- 
lectual apathy which has so long prevailed in Italy, 
university education is at so low an ebb among the 
Italians that it is not without good reasons that her 
most enlightened statesmen are looking anxiously to 
other countries for the causes of their better success, 
and laboring with great zeal for a general reform. 

* The annual amount expended upon the royal universities is over 6,000,000 
lire. 



The Present. 43 

University education is suffering from like causes in 
all the Latin states. France is in the most advanced 
condition of any of them. Indeed there is no univer- 
sity in Italy — or anywhere else, for that matter, 
outside of Berlin and Vienna — which, for the numer- 
ical strength and brilliancy of its body of professors, 
the vast range of the specific subjects taught, and the 
number of students who wait upon its various facul- 
ties, can compare with the Academie de Paris. But 
then it must not be forgotten that, in respect of great 
institutions, scientific, literary and professional, the 
remark of the first Napoleon, " Paris d'est Prance" is 
eminently true. It is there that the grandly planned 
institutions are established — ■ there that the most 
brilliant savants of the empire are gathered — there 
that are congregated the thousands of her young men 
who most hunger and thirst for the higher knowledge 
which promises national distinction. 

There are no nominal universities at all in France. 
What was formerly called, and is still frequently 
spoken of as, the University of France, is nothing 
other than a superior council of education, with the 
minister of public instruction at its head. The insti- 
tutions highest in rank are all known as academics, 
though in reality being universities in the continental 
sense. Like the universities of Italy, a full academy 
has five faculties — the usual professional faculties, 
and, besides them, a faculty of letters {faculte des 



44: University Progress. 

lettres), and a faculty of sciences {faculte des sciences). 
Many of them are wanting, howe\er, in one or more 
of the professional faculties ; indeed, those of letters 
and of the sciences are the only ones invariably 
embraced. The professors are all named by the 
emperor ; and the deans of faculty, though selected by 
the minister with the concurrence of the professors, are 
confirmed by his majesty. They are not so numer- 
ous, in proportion to the total number of faculties, 
as they are in Italy, much less so than in Germany ; 
the average per faculty, in the sixteen academies, being 
but 7.24. They are also paid by the government, 
which collects the fees required of students, and 
manages all the financial, as well as educational, affairs 
of the academies. Twelve thousand francs is con- 
sidered a high salary. 

The students pay considerably larger fees than in 
Italy, board where they like, and are subject to but 
little discipline independent of what is necessary to 
insure proficiency in study. Even that little consists 
more in searching and merciless examinations than in 
anything else. Admission to the academy is depend- 
ent, first, on the ability to produce the usual moral 
certificate, the certificate of having satisfactorily com- 
pleted a course in a lyceum or communal college, and, 
secondly, the passing a rigid entrance examination. 
Admission to the professional faculties is in no case 
possible unless the candidate can present his diploma 



The Present. 45 

as hachelier des leltres, or baehelier des sciences — 
degrees which indicate about the same amount of 
attainments as is represented by our degrees of 
bachelor of arts and bachelor of science and philo- 
sophy, and which are conditioned, in like manner, upon 
four years of academical study. The instruction in all 
the faculties is almost wholly by lectures. 

The professional courses of study are one-fourth to 
one-third shorter than in Italy ; that required for the 
degree of doctor of medicine being four years, for that 
of licentiate in theology four years, for licentiate in law 
three years. The theological degree is not recognized 
by the church, but is essential to such as are looking 
to professorships in a theological faculty. 

The present number of chairs in all the sixteen 
academies is 384 ; of which 113 belong to the Academie 
de Paris. Forty-two of the 384 belong to theology, 
98 to law, 61 to medicine, 86 to letters, and 97 to 
science so-called. The whole number of students in 
attendance upon all the academies and other superior 
institutions, such as the College de France, is some- 
thing over 23,000, or about one student for every 
1,900 inhabitants; of which over 14,000 must be 
assigned to the faculties of Paris. 

As in the British universities the prevailing spirit is 
classical, so, on the other hand, in those of France the 
mathematical, physical and natural sciences are domi- 
nant. Still, neither language, literature, nor meta- 



46 University Progress. 

physical science is neglected, much less ignored, as 
has been the case so long with the physical and natural 
sciences in England; while history aitd political 
economy are treated with great consideration. The 
main ground for regret is, that there should be, or 
seem to be, a necessity for the curtailment of that per- 
fect intellectual liberty without which it is impossible 
that any university should entirely fulfill its high mis- 
sion. 

The universities of Belgium, though they present 
some indications of German influence, are, neverthe- 
less, so nearly modelled after those of France, that 
nothing more than this simple statement seems to be 
required in this connection. They are four in num- 
ber: two under the control of the government, and 
two free, and are creditably sustained. The number 
of students frequenting them is about 2,400, or one 
for every 2,000 inhabitants. 

Switzerland falls in the same general category with 
Belgium, except that her universities are of the Ger- 
man rather than of the French type ; most of the 
instruction being given in the German language, and 
a large proportion of the professors being natives of 
the German states. 

The universities of Germany have already been said 
to represent the best system of university education 
in Europe. This is universally conceded. 



The Present. 47 

The number of faculties essential to what is known 
as a complete university, is four, to wit : faculties of 
philosophy, theology, law, and medicine. Of these 
there are some twenty-five in all the states — ten in 
Prussia, six in Austria, three in Bavaria, two in Baden, 
and one each in Saxony, Saxe- Weimar, Wurtemberg, 
and Hesse-Darmstadt ; and though differing slightly as 
to constitution and management, they bear the stamp 
of a common mold. Some of them have more than four 
faculties, for instance, as in the case of the university of 
Tiibingen, which has both a Catholic and a Protestant 
faculty of theology, and of the universities of Bavaria, 
which add to the canonical four a faculty of the politi- 
cal sciences. And again some of them — after the 
manner of the universities of Copenhagen and Hel- 
singfors, which are incorporating polytechnic schools, 
and several in Italy, Avhich have incorporated schools 
of engineering and veterinary science — have associ- 
ated with them schools of the practical arts. Among 
these are the universities of Gottingen, Halle, and 
Bonn, which have established agricultural depart- 
ments, and the university of Berlin, with its veterin- 
ary school, practically a branch of the medical faculty. 
But, then, they all agree in their most essential features, 
even as the people of the different states are one in 
certain physiognomical and mental characteristics. 

None of the schools of the industrial professions 
have yet attained to the dignity of faculties 



48 University Progress. 

The German -universities also substantially agree 
in the mode of constitution and government, in which 
respect but little change has occurred during the pre- 
sent century. Originally the faculties are created by 
appointment of the sovereign or his minister of pub- 
lic instruction. The organization is then perfected by 
the faculties themselves ; the full professors in each 
of which elect a presiding officer (dean) for that par- 
ticular faculty, and, in most cases, a single professor to 
represent them in the senatus acade?nicus, composed 
of such representatives of the several faculties, the 
actual president or rector, and the outgoing rector. 
The professors — the full professors, not the extra- 
ordinary professors, who correspond, in Germany, to 
the supjpleants or adjunct professors of France and 
have no share in the government, in most cases — 
also elect the rector of the university. All these offi- 
cers — deans, members of the academical senate, and 
the rector — are elected for but one year. 

The rector, as the executive head of the university, 
is charged with its general discipline, and in case of 
any serious misdemeanor on the part of a student, or 
other person within the range of university jurisdic- 
tion, he associates with him an " assessor " or judge. 

The organization once perfected, the senate is vir- 
tually the governing power, although all measures of 
importance, as well as all nominations of new profes- 
sors, must have the approval of the minister. 



The Present. 49 

Besides these two classes of professors, there is still 
in all German universities, that third and unique class 
of teachers, to which allusion has already been made, 
as being found in the universities of Northern Europe, 
and, to a very limited extent, also in Italy — the class 
of private lecturers (privat-docenteri). Herein lies the 
secret of their vitality and power. Every docent is 
supposed to be an aspirant for a professorship. He 
can only become such by applying to the faculty in 
whose group of studies he desires to give instruction. 
If, on inquiry, they become satisfied that he has distin- 
guished himself as a student, and possesses rare quali- 
fications, the professors in such faculty delegate two 
of their number to subject him to a thorough exam- 
ination (known as habilitation) in the branches named 
in his application. Should the result be satisfactory, 
he is then nominated to the minister, whose confirm- 
ation is his warrant to lecture on any of the topics 
belonging to his particular faculty. It is rare that a 
docent receives anything whatever in the way of a 
salary. His sole means of support are the fees he 
can command for his lectures, which must in no case 
be lower than the fees of a full professor for lectures 
on the same class of subjects. He has the free use 
of the lecture-rooms, when not occupied by the pro- 
fessors, and the qucestor collects his fees in the same 
manner as the fees of the professors. 'No restriction 
whatever is put upon him as to the particular subjects 

4 



50 University Progress. 

appropriate to his faculty upon which he shall lec- 
ture — not though he should choose to select the iden- 
tical theme for his discourse on which the most distin- 
guished professor in his faculty lectured in the same 
place the preceding hour. The student may attend 
which of them he pleases, and his attendance upon 
the lecture of the docent counts just the same, in the 
final reckoning, as attendance upon the lecture of the 
professor. Should a vacancy occur in the chair of an 
extraordinary professor — and such a thing is quite 
apt to occur where there is more genius in the rank 
below than in the one above — or should it be deter- 
mined to create a new chair, the aspiring docent rises, 
and patiently works and waits for a like good fortune 
to place him in the chair of a full professor, either in 
his own or in some other university. 

It is easy to see what a powerful stimulation to best 
endeavor, on the part of both professors and jprivat- 
docenten, these circumstances must create. 

The full professors are held in high honor, and in 
most cases enjoy fair incomes ; for, in the first place, 
they have a fixed salary from the state, of itself equal 
to a moderate support — being usually from $1,000 to 
$3,000 — and, besides this, such fees as their ability 
will enable them to command. In this way, at the 
most prosperous and numerously attended institutions, 
incomes sometimes rise as high as $5,000 to $8,000. 

The extraordinary professors usually, though not 



The Present. 51 

invariably, have fixed salaries. These are not large, 
however, and their main reliance is on the fees paid 
by students. 

From what I have just said, it follows that the life 
and success of a university in Germany may be esti- 
mated by the number of its privat-doeenten. For 
where they are numerous, the inference is legitimate 
that they are well supported ; and good support, where 
dependent on fees which are limited to very small 
amounts, as compared with every other country except 
Italy, is prima facie evidence of activity and progress. 

In the matter of material auxiliaries, such as labora- 
tories, cabinets, museums, libraries, etc., the German 
universities are better provided than any other ; their 
collections of apparatus and specimens for illustration 
often being very large and magnificent ; their chem- 
ical, physical, physiological and other scientific labora»- 
tories the finest in the world ; and their libraries occa- 
sionally numbering as high as 300,000 to 500,000 
volumes. 

Their educational status, as shown by the range of 
studies in the different faculties, may be inferred from 
these facts : that no applicant can be received as a 
matriculant unless he can produce a certificate of 
maturity {maturitatszeugniss) from a gymnasium — 
which certificate represents as high or higher attain- 
ments than the diploma of bachelor of arts in the 
United States — and is able, moreover, to pass an 



52 University Progress. 

examination at the door of the faculty he would enter ; 
that the term of study is three years in the faculties 
of philosophy, theology, and law, and live years in the 
faculty of medicine ; and that no student in any of the 
professional faculties can be admitted to an examina- 
tion for a degree unless, either prior to admission to 
such faculty, or simultaneously with his study therein, 
he shall have devoted a considerable share of time — 
not less than one year — to attendance upon lectures 
in the faculty of philosophy, which is unquestionably 
the best school of high and profound general culture 
to be found in the world. 

In matters of discipline and the requirements made 
of students, the universities of Germany are the 
antipodes of those of England. For while the British 
students board in some one of the colleges or halls, 
are watched and drilled by tutors, and are in nearly 
all respects subjected to the same sort of surveillance 
that characterizes the primary school, the German stu- 
dents, on the other hand, lodge and take their meals 
where they like, and are taught almost exclusively 
by lecturers, who neither watch nor pretend to control 
their conduct ; the theory being, that, having passed 
their . school days and entered upon the study of phi- 
losophy and the learned professions, they are no longer 
mere boys, but men. If they seriously offend, there 
are the rector and his associate judge to reprimand, 
fine, imprison (for a period not exceeding one month), 



The Present. 53 

dismiss, or expel, according to the nature of the offence. 
But until they do actually so offend they are treated 
as gentlemen. The error is, indeed, on the side of 
laxity; fur, although the excesses of former years are 
no longer common, there is but little room for doubt 
that the character and scholarship of German univer- 
sity students would be still further improved by the 
stimulating and restraining influence of a more positive 
moral atmosphere, by more frequent examinations, as 
tests of proficiency, and by a limited use of the inter- 
rogative and recitative methods, as a means of insuring 
closer attention and of fixing the truths taught them 
more permanently in the mind than is likely to be the 
case when the instruction is given by lectures exclu- 
sively. 

As to endowment, the German universities, with the 
exception of Gottingen, and perhaps two or three 
others, are poor. Berlin, the greatest of them all, 
receives almost nothing from endowment funds — its 
two hundred professors and its vast scientific establish- 
ments being sustained by the state appropriations, 
which amount to some 200,000 thalers per annum, 
increased by the very moderate fees paid by students. 

The total number of students in the universities of 
the German States is over 20,000, or about one for 
every 1,500 inhabitants. Those of Berlin and Vienna 
have each 2,500 to 3,000. The number of professors 
is over 1,800; nearly 800 of whom belong to the 



54 University Progress. 

faculty of philosophy, and the remainder to the faculties 
of medicine, law, theology, and political economy, in 
the order of mention. Berlin, alone, has very nearly 
200. 

In view of the foregoing facts, it is not surprising 
that the university is a power in Germany, nor that, 
being free, it is a power telling with wonderful effect 
upon the intellectual progress and social elevation of 
the German people. 

What, now, of the universities of the new world ? 

In South America, there are at present no institu- 
tions bearing the name of university ; nor is there one 
now known by any other name to which the title of 
university could be properly applied. At Santiago, in 
Chili, there is a " national institute," embracing a 
high-school department, with faculties of law and 
medicine, but it is now in no sense a university, nor 
does it seem to be the fixed purpose of the government 
to give it a university development. And in Brazil, 
which, educationally, is farther advanced, although 
there is a fully-formed project to establish a great 
national university, like those of Berlin and Vienna, 
but little has, as yet, been accomplished. I know of 
no other South American state that deserves special 
mention in this connection. 

The Canadian universities are all of the British 



The Present 55 

type, .and naturally inferior in rank, as they are in 
wealth and years, to those of the mother country. 
The most important institutions are the Laval Univer- 
sity, at Quebec, with faculties of arts, law, and medi- 
cine, and a theological school (division of the seminary 
of Quebec), — none of which are either properly sup- 
plied with professors or numerously attended by 
students, however, — and the University of Toronto. 
The last named has an endowment of 225,000 acres 
of the public lands, with an unusual array of fine 
buildings, erected at an aggregate cost of over 



),000, and promises, at a day not far distant, to 
become a university in fact, as well as in name ; but 
at present it is but little more than nominally so, as 
compared with any true standard. It embraces in its 
plan the faculties of arts, medicine and law, together 
with schools of engineering and of agriculture. There 
are, besides these universities so-called, several col- 
leges, in both Upper and Lower Canada, possessing 
university powers, but yet being, in no proper sense, 
universities at all. The character of the studies pur- 
sued in them, and the degrees conferred,aie essentially 
English ; although the more scientific tendencies now 
characterizing the institutions of like grade in the 

neighboring republic are discoverable. 

v 

In the United States, the case is somewhat, though 
not very materially, different. The number of insti- 



56 University Progress. 

tutions wearing the title of university is much larger 
than in any other country, and a less number of them 
have really any sort of claim to it. But, on the other 
hand, there are a few, the number of whose faculties 
and the high quality of whose aims entitle them to 
respectful consideration. The oldest of these, and the 
oldest superior institution in America, Harvard Uni- 
versity , at Cambridge, Massachusetts, may, with pro- 
priety, be taken as the representative of the class. 

The academical department in each of them occu- 
pies the same general ground as the German gymna- 
sium. In the mathematics, as well as in the belles- 
lettres and the physical sciences, it carries the pupil a 
little farther ; but on the other hand, in the ancient 
and modern languages, the course of study is quite 
inferior ; so that the most proficient bachelor of arts, 
on leaving Harvard, would find some difficulty in 
obtaining the certificate of maturity (maturitats- 
zeugniss) were he to present himself before the proper 
authorities at Berlin. It appears, therefore, that the 
academical department of our best American univer- 
sities is but a preparatory school, as compared with 
a proper faculty of philosophy, such as constitutes the 
nucleus of the German university. 

This academical department, thus narrowly limited, 
and which, at Harvard, enjoys the services of some 
twenty-seven professors and teachers, is supplemented 
in a certain way, it is true, by certain so-called scien- 



Tlie Present. 57 

tific schools. But this supplementation is more in 
appearance than in fact, since in most cases, as at 
Harvard, the school in rp:iestion has no essential con- 
nection with the academical department, to which it 
stands rather in the relation of a rival. It cannot be 
denied that it provides instruction of a high order, nor 
that its professors, in some cases, justly rank among 
the ablest men of the country and times. And if the 
terms of admission and period of study were at all in 
keeping with the vastness and importance of the field 
it assumes to represent, it might at least be placed in 
the same category with the facolta delle scienze fisiche 
matematiehe e naturali of the Italian universities, or 
the faculte de$ sciences of the best French academies. 
But, unhappily for the credit of the highest insti- 
tutions of learning in America, this school of sci- 
ence falls cpiiite below even the lowest of foreign 
standards in these and other respects. This is 
emphatically true of the Lawrence Scientific School, 
at Cambridge ; whose term of study necessary to can- 
didacy for the degree of " bachelor of science " is one 
year, and yet whose chief condition for admission is 
evidence of having received " a good English educa- 
tion ! " The conditions prescribed for the School of 
Mining and Practical Geology, opened in connection 
with the Lawrence Scientific School — including 
especially a four-years course of study — are more 
worthy of the pretensions set up for it, and help its 



58 University Progress. 

distinguished teachers to save this somewhat noted 
school of science from foreign contempt. 

The " department of philosophy and the arts " of 
Yale College is less obnoxious to severe criticism ; since 
in the scientific section thereof, known as the Sheffield 
Scientific School, the term of study is three years ; and 
since, moreover, the two-years course in its section of 
philosophy, philology and mathematics, completion of 
which is requisite to the degree of " bachelor of phil- 
osophy," is followed by certain higher two-years 
courses of study and examinations, leading to the 
degree of " doctor of philosophy." 

Nor should I omit to state, as a further ground 
of encouragement, that, very recently, "university 
courses " of lectures, designed to occupy a range 
above the ordinary academic and scientific courses 
of study, and consciously aiming to supply a grow- 
ing demand for the means of a higher degree of 
culture, have very recently been opened, not only 
at both Harvard and Yale, but also in several other 
of our universities. But then it is, nevertheless, 
beyond denial that, up to this moment, the very best 
results attained, in the way of supplying this most 
serious deficiency, fall painfully short of a realization 
of that true faculty of philosophy which is the 
pride and glory of the German university. And 
if this be true of Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and our 
best state universities, what shall be said of that vast 



The Present. 59 

multitude of inferior grammar schools and colleges, 
whose half-dozen professors are mainly occupied in 
teaching their unlettered and undisciplined pupils the 
rudiments of a barely decent English education, with a 
smattering of the Latin and Greek languages, and 
which, nevertheless, claim and ostentatiously wear that 
high title of which the great universities of Berlin, 
Paris, Vienna, and Turin are barely worthy ? 

Our university professional schools are no less open 
to grave charges. With the exception of some of the 
schools of divinity, and two or three of the medical 
faculties — notable among which are those connected 
with Harvard University, and the state University of 
Michigan — they are open to any decently moral 
applicant, without regard to educational qualifications, 
and they confer their degrees with a shameful disre- 
gard, not only of those high standards of qualification 
so universal in the most advanced European countries, 
but of any really respectable standard whatever. It is 
a sufficient substantiation of this charge that, in a 
majority of such professional schools, the conditions 
are such that the veriest ignoramus, if possessed of 
fair intellectual endowments, may enter them, and, in 
nine months or one year thereafter, go forth to the 
world a regularly authorized bachelor of law, or doctor 
of medicine ! 

On the side of practical education, it should be 
remarked that many of our universities have followed 



60 University Progress. 

the examples set by some of those of Germany, Italy, 
Denmark and Sweden — that of establishing; in or 
connecting with them schools of agriculture, veterinary 
science, engineering, forestry, and even proper poly- 
technicums ; while at least one institution, by which 
the university title has been assumed, was planned so 
exclusively with reference to the practical pursuits as 
to have been incorporated under the new name of 
" industrial university." 

The fine arts have also made an innovation upon the 
ancient order of things, by establishing themselves as 
distinct schools in some of our universities ; as, for 
example, in Yale College, Michigan University, and 
Washington University at St. Louis. 

As to their means of support, but few of our Ameri- 
can universities enjoy large permanent endowments. 
Harvard is the best circumstanced of any of them, in 
this respect, having an annual income of something 
less than $200,000. But even there the deficiency is 
seriously felt and bitterly complained of. The pro- 
fessors are everywhere in America, not only inade- 
quately paid, as a consequence, but, what is worse, 
they are, of necessity, so few in number that they are 
doomed to a perpetual drudgery of instruction, without 
the possibility, in most cases, of accpiiring the most 
complete mastery of the mnny branches taught, much 
less of devoting any share of their time to those 
researches and investigations by which the circle of 
human knowledge is ever enlarged. 



The Present. 61 

This poverty of our universities, moreover, is only 
less lamentable in that it gives rise to the temptation 
to add to the number of their students by degrading 
the standard of admission and graduation. Easy 
access, short courses of study, and cheap degrees, are 
the rule, therefore. Nor do they confine their honors 
to those who pretend to earn them by completing their 
superficial courses of study. On the contrary, they 
are, too many of them, open to bids from almost any 
quarter, and are in the almost yearly practice of con- 
ferring the highest known degrees upon men dis- 
tinguished neither for high attainments, high charac- 
ter, nor eminent service in the cause of education. To 
such absurd lengths, indeed, has this practice been 
carried, that titles are no longer evidence of any defi- 
nite amount of attainments ; and men of sufficient 
learning and reputation to venture so severe a rebuke, 
not unfrequently do themselves the honor to decline 
them. On this head I repeat what I have said in 
another place, namely, that it ought to be established 
as a principle, to which all acts of incorporation should 
of necessity conform, that no institution should have 
authority to confer literary degrees representing a 
higher degree of attainments and culture than are 
actually represented by its own educational status. 



62 University Progress. 



Ill 

From the foregoing account of the rise and present 
condition of universities in all countries, three general 
conclusions are deducible, to-wit : (1) that, in view of 
the long period of centuries since its origin, university 
education has made slow progress, and is still in a very 
unsatisfactory condition ; (2) that the spirit of progress 
has been exceedingly active in many quarters during 
the past few years ; and (3) that educational leaders 
are, nevertheless, still groping their way towards the 
realization of a higher ideal, without the most definite 
conception of what that ideal is. 

In Italy, the dominant idea for some time possessing 
the minds of reformers has been, that the government 
is attempting to maintain too many universities, and 
should at once proceed to the suppression of at least 
half of them and the concentration of all the means 
and forces available for education upon the remainder. 
" It is only in this way," the distinguished Senator 
Matteucci, late minister of public instruction, said to 
me in 1867, " that Italy can hope to make her uni- 
versities worthy of their great beginnings, of her re- 
established unity, and of her yet more glorious 
future." More definitely stated, it was the purpose 



The Faturj. 03 

of tlie Italian government, at the date of tlie late war, 
which restored Venetia to the kingdom, to maintain 
but two full universities, one at Turin, and the other 
at Naples ; the faculty of letters in which was also to 
serve the purpose of, or to have connected therewith, a 
superior normal school, for the training of teachers for 
the giiinasi and licei of the kingdom. The university 
of Pisa was also to be complete, minus the faculty of 
the mathematical and physical sciences, which, for this 
portion of the country, was to be located at Florence, 
in connection with the museum. These three univer- 
sities, alone in all the kingdom, were to have power 
to confer degrees in letters, and the first two, together 
with the faculty of Florence, alone to confer degrees 
in the sciences, and, through their normal schools, to 
train teachers for the scuole tecniche. Law and medi- 
cine were to have faculties at Turin, Pavia, Genoa, 
Catania, Modena, Parma, Pisa, Naples, Palermo, and 
Bologna ; besides which, there was to be a faculty of 
law at Sassari, and one of medicine at Cagliari. It 
was the half-formed purpose, moreover, that only the 
dogmatic part of theology should be left to the church 
seminaries ; everything else requisite being taught in 
the universities, whose degrees were to be essential to 
full orders in the clerical profession. 

What changes in this plan, if any, have been occa- 
sioned by the restoration of the university of Padua 
— and 1 am pained to add, by the recent death of 



64 University Progtess. 

Senator Matteucci, who was the moving and directing 
spirit of the reforms — it has not yet transpired; but 
the evidences are gratifying that the Italian university 
is not only to recover its long-lost distinction and glory, 
but even to surpass its former self as an educating 
power. 

Great Britian is drifting slowly towards the recon- 
struction of her lost faculties and the creation of new 
ones, embracing the important departments of physical 
and natural sciences, philosophy, and art — towards 
the total abolishment of those odious religious tests, 
which have for centuries prevented the growth of her 
ancient universities by the practical suppression of 
that freedom of the intellect and conscience, without 
which a true university is impossible — and towards 
the opening wide of the portals of the university to 
whomsoever may approach with due preparation. 

Germany, so long in the vanguard, and so in 
advance of all other countries that she has been 
thought by some to have reached the ultima tliule 
of university education, has broken the iron mold of 
the middle ages, in which were cast the inevitable four 
faculties, and now gives signs of an early opening of 
the field of the university, with impartial conditions, 
to every class of studies belonging to the domain of 
the higher education, and to every profession, suitable 



The Future. G5 

preparation for which demands not only the training 
of the gymnasium or the real school, — which is the 
need of every man, regardless of condition or occu- 
pation in life,— but also a profound, thorough and 
special study of any of that multitude of subjects 
which, in a more general way, are properly included 
in a faculty of philosophy. By force of this new idea, 
that law, medicine and theology are no longer the 
only "learned professions," political philosophy, as 
heretofore stated, has already set up its own faculty ; 
and pharmacy, veterinary science, agriculture, for- 
estry, etc., have found secondary positions within the 
pale of the university, or at least under the shadow 
of its walls. 

In view of all this activity, — this evident purpose, 
on the part of many countries, to make the university 
something larger and better than at present, — it is a 
pity that there should not have been formed some 
more definite and generally accepted idea of wherein 
the present universities are most at fault, and of the 
means, and order of means, necessary to make them 
fulfill their real office in the world. Such a settlement 
of the main question — the question of what a univer- 
sity ought to be — seems to me practicable, if they 
who discuss it will come to its consideration in the 
right spirit. And I will not conceal the fact that the 
actuating motive in the preparation of this address has 

5 



66 University Progress. 

been a strong desire, not unmixed with hope, that, 
after a careful study of the universities of the past and 
present, and a due consideration of the new condi- 
tions to be met, I might succeed in throwing some 
additional light upon the now misty and painfully 
uncertain way. 

Whatever the origin of the term university, and 
how wide soever the difference in actual character and 
condition of the institutions that have assumed it, this 
one proposition is undeniable, viz. : that, since its first 
educational use, it has ever sought to represent culture 
of the highest ki?id, to whatever age or country the 
particular institution has belonged. This, whether 
we refer to the ancient universities of Italy, France, 
England, Spain and Portugal, the more modern ones 
of these countries and of the German and Scandina- 
vian states, or to any of those more recently founded, 
either in Europe or America. There is no educa- 
tional institution above it, nor has there been from the 
beginning. Upon this phase of the qualitative ques- 
tion there seems never to have been any difference 
of opinion. 

It is the quantitative question that has so disturbed 
and perplexed the educational world in these latter 
days. This same problem may have engaged the 
attention of the mediaeval Europeans for a time, — 
while the university, as a new institution, was in its 
formative stage, — but, if it did, a practical solution of 



The Future. G7 

it was soon found. The trirlum and quadrivium 
were indispensable to all who assumed to be educated 
men; and as the mure private, and the monkish, 
schools, where these branches were taught originally, 
were apt to be wanting in a sufficient number of 
learned and commanding teachers, they were, of neces- 
sity, constituted a part of the university curriculum. 
This insured the establishment of a high faculty of 
general culture, the character and range of whose 
studies of course changed with the progress of 
knowledge. 

But it was necessary that there should also be schools, 
somewhere, for diffusing such knowledge as was then 
possessed concerning man and his individual rela- 
tions to the material world, concerning man and his 
relations to his fellow men, and concerning man in 
his relations to his Maker. Hence arose schools 
of medicine, of law, and of theology. These also 
recpiired the concentration of learned men competent 
to teach in them ; and since the association of men 
of learning, though specially devoted to different 
branches of knowledge, is ever both pleasant and 
profitable ; since they who study are advantaged in 
like manner by frequent intercourse ; and as economy 
of time, forces and material would be promoted 
thereby, without counteracting disadvantage of any 
sort, these schools of the professions were naturally 
established as faculties in the same place with the 



68 University Progress. 

faculty of general culture — thus completing the then 
narrow circle of human knowledge. 

It is not strange that such a cluster of schools should 
have received the title of universitas (all together), 
nor that the scores of universities which succeeded 
those first examples, being surrounded by the same 
general conditions, w T ere cast in the same mold. Nor 
is it surprising that institutions like Oxford and Cam- 
bridge, from which the professional faculties in course 
of time fell away, in obedience to the superior attrac- 
tive force of a great neighboring city, with extraor- 
dinary court and hospital facilities, should have 
retained a title once, but no longer, appropriate. 

Perhaps, also, it should fail to excite our surprise 
that the ancient universities should have continued in 
their accustomed work of the exclusive cultivation of 
the humanities and the three professions above named 
long after the sciences had gained recognition as 
highly important fields of knowledge and excellent 
means of mental discipline, and even after the progress 
of human development and scientific discovery had led 
to the creation of numerous professions no less intel- 
lectual, profound and difficult than the canonical and 
time-honored law, medicine and theology. It is in the 
nature of institutions, especially of old ones, to be con- 
servative, and the rigid mold of the social ideas of 
those times could hardly allow to new professions a 
ready and undisputed admission to the places of high 



The Future. 69 

honor so long exclusively enjoyed by the favored 
three. 

On the other hand, whether, in view of the general 
lack of the highest culture in America, the ignorance 
of even many of our educational leaders of the systems 
and institutions of other countries more advanced, and 
the unparalleled ambition and conceit of our people, — 
I say, whether, in view of these facts, it be a matter 
of surprise or not that scores of our country schools — 
and very poor ones at that — have been incorporated 
by our state legislatures as " universities," it is certainly 
a just cause of reproach that this wrong to the cause 
of education has been, and continues to be, actually 
perpetrated, and that, up to this moment, no concerted 
or organized effort of any sort has been made to pre- 
vent a continuance of the evil by the diffusion of just 
sentiments and opinions upon the subject. Our 
aspiring schools might at least be commended to the 
wholesome example of old Harvard and Yale, both of 
which modestly assumed the title of "college" at the 
beginning — although then, as now, the foremost 
schools of high culture in the new world — and have 
not yet deemed it necessary to ask for a change of 
title, now that they have each assumed the general 
features of a university by the addition of professional 
faculties and other schools to the academical depart- 
ment. 

But slow and faulty as has been the past, with 



TO University Progress. 

these data before us, — the evident original intent to 
make the university a place of the highest and most 
universal culture, and the manifest tendency, on the 
part of the most advanced countries, to remold their 
universities, in this respect, after the original ideal, — 
it might be assumed, in the absence of any conflicting 
testimony or weighty objection, that elevation and 
expansion are to be, and ought to be, the watchword 
of their future real progress. Let us see, therefore, 
whether there be valid and substantial objections to 
this line of policy. 

Of course, no scholar will question the propriety of 
elevating the standard of university education to the 
highest practicable limit. But then there is, unfortu- 
nately, a very wide difference as to what that practi- 
cable limit is. If we are to judge them by their 
actual deeds, a majority claim that the university 
must gauge its standard down to a correspondence 
with those of the schools below them. " Unless we 
do this," say they, " we shall get no students ; all our 
preparations will avail us nothing, and we shall lose 
the early glory of a great success" — which they are 
shrewd enough to see is measured by the public, 
ignorant of the true office of a university, not by the 
hi<di range of its studies and the number and value 
of its contributions to the intellectual progress of the 
world, but by the number of students whose names 
are found in its catalogue. 



The Future. 71 

It is this lack of a true and noble ambition on the 
part of some of our university authorities — this lack 
of loyalty to the sacred interests they assume to repre- 
sent — this shameful readiness to impose upon an 
uninformed public by putting members in the fore- 
ground and claiming consideration on their account, — ■ 
it is this false dealing with the real interests of educa- 
tion in America that is its chief curse to-day. It is a 
ground of encouragement, however, that here and 
there are to be found educators and earnest general 
workers in this field, who hold that the university is 
not to be the governed, but the governing, power — 
that the standards of the common schools of the country 
are not to determine the grade of our university edu- 
cation but are themselves to be determined by it — ■ 
that the university is not to be elevated to a higher 
plane by the uplifting of the schools below it, as 
islands are sometimes raised in the sea by subter- 
ranean forces, but is itself the only power by which 
they are to be raised to a higher level. 

The first effect of the substitution of higher for the 
present low standards of admission and graduation in 
our universities would undoubtedly be a diminution 
of numbers, since it would necessitate the transfer of 
a large number of half-prepared, or wholly unprepared, 
students from their halls to the district and high 
schools, where they belong. But, as a secondary 
effect, it would also lead to a conversion of many 



72 University Progress. 

unsuccessful, pretending universities into prosperous 
high schools and colleges, to the greatly enhanced 
value of the degrees conferred by the universities, and 
an increased demand for them, on the part of students 
the most worthy, and, as a necessary consequence, to 
the stimulation and improvement of the entire system 
of popular education. 

I believe that these several conclusions are incontro- 
vertible, and that, together, they constitute a sufficient 
warrant for the declaration that elevation in grade is 
the first important condition in the progress of univer- 
sity education. 

If our existing universities, state and denomina- 
tional, for any reason cannot yet rise to the high level 
of a true university, they ought at least to rise out of 
their present competition with the colleges and high- 
schools of the country, whose work they unnecessarily 
duplicate, notwithstanding the need is so crying for a 
work the colleges and high-schools cannot perform. 
If they cannot do even this, then are they not so 
much as incipient universities, and we have a moral 
right to demand of them, in the name of common 
honesty, that they relinquish their false title and hence- 
forth claim to be what they really are. 

Over the state institutions, which exist not for the 
church, but for the citizen, and which are sustained 
by the whole body of citizens, we have also unlimited 



The Future. 73 

legal control, and are in duty bound to so mold and 
manage them as most effectually to promote the 
advancement of learning and the better culture of the 
people. When properly co-ordered, they will form a 
complete and harmonious system ; embracing the 
primary school, the grammar school, the high-school, 
and the university, each higher resting upon the next 
lower member of the series. 

On the basis of such a system, the university faculty 
of philosophy ought, if possible, to begin about where 
the college now ends. As a practical question, how- 
ever, it may hardly be possible to raise even the best 
of our universities to this level at once. But it cer- 
tainly is practicable to abolish the university " prepar- 
atory department," wherever found ; leaving the work 
now done by it to be performed by the grammar school 
and " academy." More than this, it is possible to so 
adjust the relations between our best universities and 
the high-schools and colleges as to leave to these last 
a portion of the work now done by the university 
academical department ; which, being, in such event, 
raised to the rank of a faculty of philosophy, begin- 
ning where the last year of the most advanced high- 
school, or the junior year of the ordinary college, now 
ends, and carrying the student from that point forward, 
one, three, or more years, according as he may aim at 
attainments properly represented by the baccalaureate, 
the master's degree, or the doctorate, would thus 
become the nucleus of a true university. 



74 University Progress. 

Having done this, if the state would then confine 
the degree-conferring authority — at least in the case 
of all degrees above that of bachelor — to the univer- 
sity, and put a stop to the prevailing practice of indis- 
criminately conferring degrees " in course " and hon- 
orary degrees, it would, by these several measures, 
insure to a very considerable class of our more ambi- 
tious students the advantage of two or three additional 
years of study and instruction in the higher ranges of 
science, letters and philosophy, as well as suitable 
recognition for attainments actually made, and so 
still further strengthen the suffering cause of superior 
education. 

It now remains to inquire whether the expansion of 
the university, by the. incorporation of new faculties, 
be also a means of true progress. 

On this question, likewise, after the most careful 
consideration and no little observation in all countries 
where the university at present exists, I must take the 
affirmative. I am aware that there are some distin- 
guished leaders who believe that such expansion is 
likely to result in the utter dissolution of the univer- 
sity. But do not these persons take counsel of their 
fears, rather than of their reason ? Is it not true that 
since a majority of the world's universities were 
founded, each with its three professional faculties, new 
professions have sprung up and gained universal 



The Future. 75 

recognition, the exclusion of which would he no less 
unjust and absurd than the expulsion of any of those 
already embraced ? If not, what mean the numerous 
high schools of art, of architecture, of engineering, of 
mining and metallurgy, and of that most complex and 
difficult of all the professions — agriculture — a com- 
plete preparation for which requires a knowledge of 
the whole range of the sciences ? What mean those 
magnificent clusters of professional schools, the poly- 
technicums of Paris, Zurich, Carlsruhe, Hanover, 
Munich, Berlin, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Ilelsingfors, 
Saint Petersburg and Boston, if law, medicine and 
theology are the only professions ? Or, if it be insisted 
by the ultra-fastidious that all these are still mere 
occupations, too redolent of the barn-yard, the furnace, 
the forge and the factory, to be admitted into the daily 
company of the more refined professions, so long hon- 
ored with the title of learned, what shall be said of 
the superior normal schools, to be found in so many 
of the most enlightened countries, with their high 
standards of admission and protracted courses of 
study? and what of statesmanship, that new profes- 
sion, almost universal quackery in, or rather outside 
of, which is the present political curse of this and all 
other countries % 

It is useless to multiply words. The Chinese wall 
of exclusivism, that has so long shut in the narrow v 



76 University Progress. 

little kingdom of the university, is destined to be 
pulled clown. The work of demolition is already 
going on. The question is no longer whether new 
territory shall be added : that is a foregone conclusion. 
The only vital question is, To what extent shall the 
annexation proceed, and upon what conditions ? 

Need there be any limit at all ? and, if so, what 
shall the limit be ? 

It is clear that there must be definite conditions of 
some sort, else the central idea of the university would 
be lost, and the vast aggregation of heterogeneous 
elements composing the whole tall in pieces, for want 
of a central harmonizing and unitizing power. But 
this central power once assured, I see no sufficient 
reason why the university may not also embrace facul- 
ties of normal instruction, of political and social science, 
of agriculture, of mining and metallurgy, of mechan- 
ical and civil engineering, of architecture, of commerce 
and navigation, of naval and military science, and of 
the fine arts. While, on the other hand, economy of 
means essential to the formation and support of great 
laboratories, cabinets, museums and libraries, econ- 
omy of instructional force, the stimulation resulting 
from the presence, in the same general institution, of 
large numbers of professors and students, and the lib- 
eralizing influence of frequent association with persons 
devoted to different studies and aiming at different 
pursuits, — all these are powerful reasons why the 



The Future. 77 

university should embrace the several professions 
named, together with yet others as fast as they attain 
to the dignity of professions. 

What, now, is this central power, whose office shall 
be the holding of this cluster of schools together in a 
complete and harmonious system, even as the celestial 
bodies which constitute the astral systems of the uni- 
verse are held in their places, warmed and illumined, 
each by their own central sun % It is none other than a 
high faculty of philosophy — that fountain-head of 
intellectual life and universal knowledge, to which the 
world has been so greatly indebted in the past, and to 
which it" must continue to look in the future for 
enlightenment, stimulation and guidance. Bat, even 
more than in the past, it must be made a faculty in 
which not knowledge so much as the science of knowl- 
edge, not facts and events so much as the philosophy 
of facts and events, shall be taught, and in which 
science, letters, philosophy and art shall be profoundly 
and unselfishly studied. 

Plant in the centre of your university, and there 
resolutely maintain, such a faculty of philosophy as 
this ; call into its service men of learning, genius and 
power of inspiration ; and require of all who would 
enter any of the various professional faculties that 
they shall matriculate in the university and give at 
least a liberal minimum of time to important general 
studies in this its central faculty, as a condition of 
graduation, whether in law, agriculture, engineering, 



78 University Progress. 

medicine, or aught else. Do this, and I care not how 
many professional schools of high grade are clustered 
around it. The greater the number the more com 
pletely will they all together constitute a true univer- 
sity ; while each one of the cluster, by virtue of the 
union, will rise to a higher level and the more per 
fectly fulfill its own particular mission. 

Whether the faculty of philosophy may, with advan- 
tage, be divided, as in the academies of France, and 
the universities of Belgium, Holland and Italy, and as 
in at least one instance* in this country, in such man- 
ner as to group those studies which more properly 
belong to the domain of philosophy and letters in 
one, and those which belong to science and art in the 
other, is a secondary question that I will not stop to 
discuss at this time. 

It remains to be urged that the professional faculties 
must be organized under the inspiration of a like pur- 
pose to make them fit agencies of preparation for the 
special interests they may be intended to represent. 
Superficiality is criminal where thoroughness is possi- 
ble ; and public sentiment should rigidly hold all 
schools that assume to qualify men to deal profession- 
ally with the important interests of the individual and 
of society to a full and faithful performance of their 
respective functions. 

As to the constitution and organization of the pro 
fessoriate, it appears to me that but little improvement 

* The University of Wisconsin. 



The Future. 79 

is likely to be made very soon upon the admirable 
German system ; the main features of which are very 
sure, sooner or later, to be introduced in all other 
countries. 

There is, however, one other respect in which there 
seems likely to be a radical change in the university — 
in the extension of its privileges to women. The grow- 
ing recognition of the importance of better, and the 
best possible, facilities for their education, together 
with the impracticability of founding and maintaining 
two sets ol institutions, one for male, and the other for 
female students, has already constrained many private, 
and a few state, institutions — notable among which 
last are the universities of Paris, Zurich, Vienna, 
Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa — to throw open their 
doors to them more or less freely. And, unless the 
experience of these few should cause a revulsion in 
sentiment, and a return, on their part, to the former 
exclusive system, one hazards nothing in predicting 
that the example thus set by them will be followed, 
in course of time, by all the rest. 

If now the conclusions reached upon the several 
questions involved be correct, — and a full and free 
discussion of them is cordially invited, — may we not 
assume that the university of the future ought to be, 
and is destined to be, not only a higher, but a more 
comprehensive institution than the highest and most 
complete of those now in existence — an institution 



80 University Progress. 

higli enough to embrace the utmost Emits of actual 
intellectual achievement, and broad enough to include 
every real profession — • an institution fulfilling, as has 
never vet been done, its legitimate three-fold office, of 
giving the highest instruction in every department, 
and alone conferring the higher degrees therein ; of 
extending the boundaries of human knowledge by 
means of research and investigation ; and of exerting 
a constantly stimulating and elevating influence upon 
every class of schools of lower grade \ 

The realization of this ideal university will require 
larjxe sums of money. Its foundation must be reck- 
oned by millions, its professors by hundreds, and its 
means of illustration and experiment be extensive in 
every department. But the results upon our whole 
system of education, and upon the intellectual pro 
gress of the people, would be beyond calculation. 

A true university is the leading want of American 
education. And I venture to say to this numerous and 
influential body of American teachers, no subject of 
greater importance can be urged upon your attention, 
or by you upon the attention of the country. If t be 
impossible, at the present, to secure the founding of 
more than one such institution in America, let us nei- 
ther take rest nor allow rest to the country until at 
least that one shall stand, unique and grand, before 
the world — a tit illustration of American freedom 
and American aspirations for the progress of the race. 



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